Early Childhood Education - Essay Example

Name: Tutor: Course: College: Date: Early Childhood Education Early Childhood education is very important in developing a child’s life, both today and in the future. This sets the foundation upon which the child will build his future life in all its dimensions as an adult in the future. As a result, this means that how well people handle this part of a child’s education will determine how well the child will fair in future in academics and in his work life and generally his social life. The subject of Early childhood education has been of great focus around the world and has been said to take care of five aspects of a child’s life. These include the Social, Political, Intellectual, Creative and Emotional (SPICE). This article looks at the social and political aspects of Early Childhood Development and compares how people do those two in New Zealand and South Korea. The need for comparison is to identify the similarity and differences between the two countries. As much as the concept of early childhood development is the same around the world, cultural, economic and political differences among the different states in the worlds affects the way this is implemented in the different countries. Due to the differences in the political economic and cultural differences between Australia and South Korea, these two countries offer a good opportunity for identifying how these differences can affect the way these is implemented. South Korea South Korea, unlike most other countries in the world, is not racially and linguistically diverse. Because of this, the implementation of Early Childhood Education does not need to be comprehensive in helping the children to be able to deal with social problems because at this tender age the children may not need these skills. South Korea is made of one ethnic group and their language is the same. The other thing that has influenced the implementation of early childhood education in South Korea is the political agenda that has largely been shaped by the economic development. With industrialization becoming part f the day, more and more women who would be otherwise be housewives’ in a less industrialized world, are becoming working mothers. Because of this, the educationist gears the government’s reaction in the implementation of early Childhood Education to not only developing the youngsters and helping them in their intellectual development, but also in helping the ever-increasing number of working women in the society to be able to cope with the ever-increasing burden of being a mother and a working person. This has meant that the implementation of Early Childhood Education is merged with the concept of baby care and day care. With this kind of setting, it is possible to achieve not only giving the child the correct Early Childhood Education, but also helps the government to ensure that its workforce is not affected by the increasing number of work class parents who would otherwise be too busy taking care of their children. This desperate need by the government to salvage the economy by fixing the Early Childhood Education system has meant that the government is the main player in the industry. This then means that people make the provision of this Early Childhood Education uniform for all. As such, private providers are not as common in this industry like is the case in most developing and developed countries. The fact that the government is the main contributor to Early Childhood Education in South Korea may also mean that there is no commercial competition in the industry, which leads to less research and development. the government is more than not interested in protecting the industrial workforce by sustaining the labor that would be held back is young mothers were unable to attend their jobs because they have to attend to their children (OECD, 2004). New Zealand. New Zealand has the most complex Early Childhood Development services in the world. Early Childhood education Services are provided by a range of providers from the public held organizations to the private run centers and even church groups. The government is so involved and concerned with the delivery of these services that it even funds privately run centers as long as they meet minimum requirements for the funding. Privately run centers are said to be licensed Early Childhood Development Centers while the government run centers are said to be chartered centers. These centers are dedicated to the provision and delivery of Early Childhood Development and are always fit for children of five years and below of age. Early Childhood education centers are open and accessible by the youngsters for morning as well as evening sessions. The sessions are more or less informal and are deliberately designed to help the children forge strong and useful social skill more than they are designed for academic achievement. As such, the system is so informal that even the parents are a part of the system and are allowed and expected to contribute to the process of delivering Early Childhood Education to the infants. The provision of Early Childhood Education is given by several institutions such as kindergartens, nanny centers, care centers etc. however, the main driving force for these providers of Early Childhood Development services is the need to help the children develop special skills such as useful social and communication as well as survival skills. Therefore, these service providers are not geared towards administering academic education and are less prepared to give academic knowledge to the youngsters. The need to design the system to be more of a social development centers rather than academic development is founded on the knowledge that social skills learned at this early age are very useful in the future and failing to address them at an early age leaves no opportunity to do the same at a later age. Academic competency can wait and be catered for in the future. The other thing that has been imminent is that the social skills acquired at this early age help the child to perform better in academic education. This is seen later in the elementary schooling as the child will not only be able to communicate competently but also will be able to have emotional health that is necessary for creating a healthy state of mind for learning. As a result, the focus on social development to the children is regarded as a long-term education plan for the children who are younger than five years in age. This is then followed by the early elementary schooling where the children are now able to apply all the special abilities they gained from their Early Childhood Education to gain the necessary academic education they need. New Zealand is more of a developed country, and economically it is very far, probable past the mark of industrial revolution and into the information revolution. The New Zealand population and the families are diverse in so many ways, such as economically, social classes, ethnicity and race as well as political orientation. The government facilitates most of the Early Childhood Education. Consequently, higher-class families prefer to use private providers because they believe to be better and more effective (William, 2009). In New Zealand, various different organizations such as the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, National Out of School and Hours Services Association has come together to implement the and facilitate the development of Early Childhood education. Even the churches have not been left behind in the provision of Early Childhood Development. In recognition of the young children need more than just academic learning, various churches have started providing this important aspect of Early Education to children because they believe that the church can have a positive impact on the child’s spiritual and thus social development. These organizations have in the past held various information forums to see how their combined contributions to the process of making early Childhood Education a success in a changing social economic environment. This however, has not changed the way this implementation of education structure looks much better because the framework is the same. Nevertheless, the organizations’ effort to come together is in the attempt to improve the quality of services that Early Childhood Development organizations offered to parents and their children. With the population being a mixture of all types of social and economic classes, the distribution between Early Education Services given by the government and those given by the private sector has been well determined by the different classes. New Zealand’s public administration of Early Childhood education under the Ministry of Education has undergone various reforms. Even as Early Childhood Development around the world and family welfare organizations such as UNICEF recognize the need for Early Childhood Development Concepts to be extend to a child’s later age to as early as eight years of age, New Zealand’s public administration takes heed of this fact. This has been an important thing for the government as it is the basis on which, the making of success of future generations comes up. As a result, serious research has been committed in the effort to develop a system that will guarantee the best practices in the development Early Childhood Education curriculum. In New Zealand, as Gordon (2010) points out, the public administration of Early Childhood Education recognizes the fact that the different social classes may need to have different needs when it comes to the dispensing of this important thing. As a result, different tailor made programs have been developed to meet different needs in different social classes. For instance, there is a specially made program for children form aboriginal families; this program is applicable in areas where there are more families, which are Maori. This is in line with research finding that has indicated that the way people perceive Early Childhood Education may differ across social-economic classes. For example, high-class families may afford longer hours in school for their infants while poorer families may not. While this means that the children from poorer families will have less education time and thus have a disadvantage against the children from richer families, it also means that the children from the richer families may have too much of schooling time and luck the important social contact with their family members. This would then means that their overall early Childhood Development would be affected because the success of early Childhood Education (Development) encompasses the entire SPICE Model, that is, Social, Physical, Intellectual, Creative and Emotional aspects of Early Childhood Development. Comparisons The administration of Early Childhood Education and Development around the world seems similar. It is all developed around the concept that the human brain is at its most active development and growth at this early stage of life. In South Korea for example, the government’s effort to improve the Early Childhood Development has been inspired by the government’s desire to develop a more robust future generation in the belief that if much is invested in these young ones, then they are most likely to turn out to be better citizens and leaders in the future. The same case is happening in New Zealand. The government, through the ministry of education has dedicated its resources in ensuring that the services of Early Childhood Education and Development in the nation by coming together with private providers. As time goes by and the importance of ECD continually becomes evident, both South Korea and New Zealand have recognized the need to extend the educational concept of Early Childhood Education to later years of a child life to make sure that the child benefits completely from this. This is in the recognition that the human brain continues its organic growth until about the age of eight years and therefore until the child is at this age its brain is still candidate for programming. This programming concept, according to (McDonaldson, 2009) has been encouraged by researchers and child development experts who believe in its use to guide the course of the child’s future. The fact that the there are differences between South Korea and New Zealand means that there are some differences in the way the services of ECD are administered. However, regardless of the means, in both South Korea and New Zealand, the concepts of ECD are designed specifically to meet the same goals. These goals are to help in guiding the development of the child’s faculties in all areas of life in the right direction and with the hope that this will be useful in making the child to develop better skills in both her childhood life as well as in his or her adulthood. From the social aspect of Early Childhood Education, the Korean system is less concerned with helping the child to learn how to deal with such social issues as racial, class as well as ethnic relations. This is because the environment does not have the right ingredients to require the child to have this development. Early Childhood development relies so much on the environment because the child’s development is entangled on what the environment offers. Therefore, those children growing up in areas where racial and ethnic issues are imminent should have training on how to deal with these issues as early as possible. In Saudi Arabia, Early childhood development is primarily geared towards the development of future workforce who will work for the economy. The social aspect of early childhood education is concerned not only with the child’s ability to develop the necessary skills in all the realms of life but is also concerned with the need to liberate young working mothers so they can work without having their productivity affected by the fact that they are parenting. The New Zealand Early Childhood Development system also recognizes this, but with the realization that the population is more diverse in its economic arena and that some of these children are not future government workforce and therefore these children need to achieve other skills that are not necessarily geared towards making a future robust workforce. The political aspect of Early Childhood development in New Zealand recognizes the need to involve various social development groups in order to improve the quality of these services in the land. Likewise, the South Korean government looks forward to improving the services of Early Childhood Education by not engaging private organizations but by commissioning more research work in the area. Because of the nature of the economy in South Korea, Early Childhood Education has been put together with primary education to ensure that the benefits of Early Childhood Education have been exploited to the fullest. In the same way, the provision of day care services in addition has been merged with the provision of Early Childhood Education Services in the recognition that the child’s brain starts is cognitive growth even at the earliest days of her life. Both Australia and South Korea recognize the role that professional Early Childhood Education plays in the bid to empower women in the society. In South Korea, for example, there is a widespread traditional view of the woman as the designated child caregiver and homemaker. This view threatens not only the social and professional lives of most women, but also threatens the quality of Early education that the kids are likely to get, if they are left in the hands of their mothers who are not experts in Child Development (State Education, 2011). In Australia, the case is pretty much the same especially among the poorer and more traditional citizens. These social factors threaten the development of better early childhood education services and both governments are working hard to eliminate this barrier. The other thing imminent in the way South Korea and New Zealand delivers Early Childhood Education is that both these countries has continually subscribed into the international standards that have been laid by international professional bodies. New Zealand, for example, apart from subscribing to the local Australian standards also adheres to international standards with the recognition that the educational needs for youngsters are pretty much the same all over the world. This subscription to international standards has made the Early Childhood education services to improve in the recent past and more is expected to take place in the future. The implication of this is that as the understanding of Early Childhood Education continues to increase and awareness among the parents increase, there will be better services in the future, thus creating better chances for the children to gain more from their early childhood education. In both New Zealand and South Korea, Early Childhood development is still under development, with research playing a big role in searching a brighter future in this very important field. References Gordon, M. (2010). The New Age in Childhood Education. International Journal of Psychology , 17-18. McDonaldson. (2009). The Future of Education. New York, NY: Pearson Education Books. Note, O. C. (2004). Early Childhood Education and Care Policy. Korea: OECD Country Note. University, S. (2011). South Korea - Preprimary & Primary Education. Retrieved May 13, 2011, from State Educatioon: http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1401/South-Korea-PREPRIMARY-PRIMARY-EDUCATION.html William, M. (2009). Early Chilhood Education; New Concepts. journal of education , 12-15. Read More